The Pulpit Commentary — Luke — Volume 2 — Section 53

what be bas] is taken away that [unused capacity] which he has." (2) Spiritual sensibility; the capacity of feeling the force of things Divine, of being sensibly and practically affected by them, of being moved and stirred by them to appropriate deci- sion and action. No man can live on in conscious sin without continually losing this sacred and precions sensibility. Neglected and unapplied, it withers away, it wastes. 2. It is the waste of perverswn. Man was made for the very highest ends-made for God; to study, to know, to Jove, to serve, to rejoice in God himself, And when he spends his powers on himself and on his own animal enjoyment, he is "wasting hie substance," turning from their true Object to one immeasurably lower t.he faculties and the opportunities with which he came into the world. Il. PrrrABLE WANT. "He began to be in want." Indulgence is expensive and unfits for work; sinful companions are happy to share the treat, but they are slo~ to re~ll the purse. Si~ leads d?wn to_ de~tit:ution; it takes away a ta_ste for all pure enJoyment, and provides nothmi lasting m its stead. 'l'he man who yields himself to the power of sin loses all joy in God, all relish for spiritual enjoyments, all gratification in sacred service, all capacity for appreciating the fellowship of the good and great, all sense of the sacredness and spiritual worth of life. What has he left? He is begaared, ruined. " No man gives unto him; " no man can give unto him. You cannot give to a man what he is not capable of receiving; and until he is radically changed he cannot receive anything truly precious at your hands. III. G&mvous DEGRADATION. He was "sent into the :fields to feed swine." This was bad enough; yet was there one thing worse-" he was fain to fill his belly with the husks the swine did eat." He went down to the lowest grade imaginable. The degradation of the soul is the very saddest thing under the sun. When we see a man who was ma.de to :find his heritage in God's likeness and service satisfying himself with that which is bestial, degrading himself to the drunkard's song, to the impure jest, to the part of astute rognery, and :finding a horrible enjoyment in these shameful things, then we see a human heart satiating itself with "husks that the swine do eat," and then we witness the most lamentable of all degradations. Such is life in the "far country." Distance from God means waste, want, degrada- tion. Its full and :final outworking may take time, or it may hasten with terrible rapidity. But it comes sooner or later. 1. There is a way of return even from that "strange land," that evil estate (see succeeding homilies). 2. How wise to place ourselves out of danger of these dire evils by connecting ourselves at once with Jesus Christ!-C. Vers. 17-19.-The soul'11 return. Out in the far country, living a life of guilty waste, of dreary want, of shameful degradation, the prodigal son was in truth a man "beside himself;" he was lost to himself; he had taken leave of his own better self, of his understanding, of his reason; from his own true self he was afar off. But now there is- I. A RlITUllN TO Hlll'.BELF. 1. He regains his wisdom as he gains a sense of his folly. He returns to his right mind; he loses his infatuation as he perceives how great is his foolishness to be in such a state of destitution when he might" have all things and abound." What insensate folly to be starving among the swine when he might be sitting down at his father's table! The soul comes to itself and regains its wisdom when it perceives how foolish it is to be perishing with hunger in its separation from God when it might be "filled with all the fulness of God." Our reason returns to us when we refuse to be any longer misled by the infatuation, by "the deceitfulness of sin" and when we see that the pining and decay of our spiritual powers is a poor exdbange indeed for the wealth and health of spiritual integrity. 2. He is rest~red to sanity of mind as he obtains a sense of his sinfulness. To be able to say, as he 1s now prepared to say, "I have sinned," is to come back into a right and sound spiritl!al condition. We are in a wholly unsound mental state when we can regard our dis- loyalty and disobedience to God with complace~cy and even :with satis~action. But when our ingratitude, our forgetfulness, our un:fihal and rebellious behaviour towards God, ia recognized by us as the "evil and bitter thing" it is, as the wrong and shameful thing it is, and when we are ready, with bowed head and humbled heart, to say," Father, J ha"7e sinned," then are we in our right mind; then have we returned to ourselves. • ott. xv.1-32.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. tUKE.